Yelp Now Offers Reviews & Comprehensive Data on Hospitals

Finding a great restaurant or hotel is easy to do on the popular review site, Yelp. Most Yelp users would however not think to use it to find a great nursing home or hospital, but now they can. Yelp is now offering consumer reviews and government information on hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis clinics. Users will be able to look up average ER wait times and view fines paid by a nursing home for serious deficiencies. They can also look up how often patients getting dialysis treatment are readmitted to a hospital because of treatment-related infections and even a clinic’s death rate. Yelp partnered with ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, which compiled data for 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes, and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the U.S.

While consumers can acquire information on these hospitals on Medicare’s Hospital Compare Web page, finding the desired information can be difficult. As a result, Yelp will now offer access to key information such as reviews on the quality of doctor communications with patients as well as the level of noise in patient rooms, all based on patient satisfaction surveys conducted for Medicare. Businesses in the health category make up 6% of reviewed businesses on Yelp, but that percentage is bound to grow quickly now that users can view such comprehensive information on medical businesses.

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